Hitachi Rejuvenates Blu-ray Camcorder Line

It is common knowledge Hitachi's first range of Blu-ray camcorders didn't set the world alight, so its gone back to the drawing board...

The 'DZ-BD9H' looks an entirely more appealing prospect with the option to record to either a 60GB hard drive or directly to a Blu-ray disc. It features a 5MP CMOS sensor, the company's proprietary 'Picture Master' image processing technology and is fully BD-R 2.0 compliant.
Interestingly, Blu-ray rewriteable discs are also on the menu meaning that footage recorded to them can be edited letting you pop out a fully finished film. On top of this the DZ-BD9H is able to record at 'Full HD' 1080p (1920 x 1080) resolution and with compression this crams nine hours of footage on the hard drive and an hour on an 8cm Blu-ray disc. 1440 x 1080 and 720 x 480 pixel modes are also available for the more capacity conscious users.

As for still shots, both 4:3 and 16:9 modes are in there with the DZ-BD9H managing 5MP in the former and 3MP in the later. Hitachi promises greatly improved low light performance.

HDMI, component and USB 2.0 connections are all present too while the display is large at 2.7 inches and the dimensions compact at 80 x 165 x 86mm. It won't be too much of a back strain either at 700g. The DZ-BD9H goes on sale in Japan next month for ¥180,000 (approx £859) and expect it launch globally soon after for slightly more.

In related news, the company is also - somewhat surprisingly - pulling out of the Australian market, citing poor sales and low margins. The move will result in 40 job cuts from its Sydney HQ. Expect all staff to soon appear behind bars across London while inter-railing.